/diy/ - Do It Yourself

I just made some of that corn bread. Put some cheese in it. Delicious.

Never had any luck with it. Ive always done better building a fire and making some cooking ware or using something ready made.

>>47071
Jiffy is fake cornbread. The real shit is better.

Also, use cracklin, not cheese.

>>47064
Here's my second one. Much bigger, uses 2 panes of glass with the inner pane tempered glass. It has around R23 insulation and reaches about 450F. The cooking chamber could be a bit bigger. This pic is before I put wheels on it and handles to run it around easily. I'd done a LOT of cooking in this thing.

>>47073
I'll be sure to do that right after I finish putting up my confederate flag and sleeping with my sister.

>>47077
Here's the beginning of a 3rd cooker designed for winter use when the sun is low in the sky. I've not finished this one.

>>47084
Here's the 3rd one I made. This one is designed similar to my large one, but is micro size and made to be collapsible and easily transported. I normally keep this one behind the seat in my truck. It comes in handy on long hikes and camping.

>>47080
That's rather racist.

Jiffy sucks, once you have had the real thing, made in a cast iron skillet. Hands down.

Here's another one I made. A very tiny one. I was just experimenting one day and trying to use house hold items and trash. It worked well. I didn't need the glue, only the tape.

>>47080
Also, spoken like a true, down home, matzo ball eating Jew who has never enjoyed a nice pot of greens, or a good plate of gizzards and Red Hot.

Here is a solar funnel cooker I made. It works well enough, but you can't fold up the reflector. I abandoned this design because of that.

>>47096
>>47090
>>47080
>>47073
This isn't /b/.

>>47101
Agreed, and thats the problem with the Anon poster. I was knocking on Jiffy, he is knocking on culture.

Captcha: 60-6I. troloo

This was also an experiment. I was trying to make the smallest solar cooker possible that could cook fast. By small, I mean when not in use. This is a survival solar blanket. It worked, but the cooking time was very long and aligning it was a problem.

This is not a cooker, but instead a solar bread riser. If you make one of these you need to make sure you don't get it too hot too quickly.

Normally, you can toss a loaf of bread in to a solar cooker and cook it as it is. This is because most solar cookers are rather cool and take a while to cook. The bread rises normally and then cooks.

However, in my solar cooker the temps are that of a conventional oven and I need to either rise the bread separately or keep the reflectors off until the bread is ready. I developed this bread riser out of curiosity. It works very well.

Here's my large solar cooker with the bread riser. Note that in these pics the large cooker has handles and wheels. For scale, the tops of the reflectors happens to be 4 feet wide and the bread rising box is an office paper box that normally holds two stacks of paper.

Cooking meatloaf in the large cooker.

Note that the temperature is not very high. This is because when you put cold food into an oven the heat is being soaked up by the food and anything else in the oven. Once the food has cooked fully (190F inside) then there's a sharp spike in the ambient air temperature of the oven. It is this spike of heat that can quickly burn food.

Here're pics of the collapsible solar cooker cooking pizza.

In case it has not escaped anyone, I normally use junk foods to test the cookers. The real cooking begins when I've worked the bugs out.

Here's a blackberry cake in the large cooker.

A loaf of bread and some chicken.

Having double layers of glass on the cooker vastly increases the temperatures inside. When I first made this cooker, I did not use tempered glass on the inner layer and it cracked. The outer layer does not get hot enough to crack so it is only cheap plate glass. The tempered glass needs to be ordered to size and cost me $30. Most solar cookers don't need tempered glass since they are all low temp cookers.

Here was the first thing I ever cooked in my first solar cooker; a burrito.

A chocolate cake baked in the large cooker.

By the way, OP, im still watching your thread.

Did you really make these things, or are you trolling?

>>47073

>faking a subsidized grain
no its, corn. just not very good.

Here's another loaf of bread.

>>47163
I made them. I've not taken photos of them in a long time. All of these photos have been posted a time or two on /ck/ already. The only cooker I'm using now is the large one, but he aluminum foil is starting to lose its shine and I need to apply new foil. I'm not sure how to do that. I either need to take the old off and glue new on, which is very hard to remove, or find a way for glue to dry between two layers of foil.

I don't own the property I live on, so I'm wondering what is the risk of fire and some ideas to prevent it?

>>47174
He is right though, Jiffy corn bread is pretty bad when compared to homemade cornbread made in an iron skillet.

The best cornbread is made with nixtamalized corn. Which reminds me I have a bunch of this year's dried Indian corn I need to turn into nixtamal.

>>47180
The risk of fire is slim, bro.

>>47180
Most solar cookers can't start fires. They do not get hot enough. The only kind that you really need to be careful with are parabolic dish cookers. They focus light to a very small spot and act like a magnifying glass. They can light things on fire.

What causes accidents is when people put their cooker away in the shade and later in the day the sun comes out on that side and it catches something on it on fire or whatever. Keeping it covered prevents that.

This is a parabolic dish solar cooker.

>>47187

OP, you pic is also a bit much.

One can cut down and fold together soda cans to make a cooker for an open flame much easier.

>>47188
The pic in >>47187 is not mine. That cooker is the cooker for a village in Africa. They use cookers like that because searching for wood can lead to death, kidnapping, and rape for the women. I'm dead serious too.

The thing with a solar cooker like the one here, >>47138 is that you can set it up in about 3 minutes and forget about it and go do other things. It's a way to easily bake and cook pretty much anything.

I have several hobo stoves and soda can alcohol stoves I've made too.

The best help to me with using solar cookers is to keep cooking costs and cooling costs. In the summer, I do not need to use an air conditioner if I don't use the stove. Since I bake all the time, I need a way to bake outside the house. The large solar cooker here, >>47120 fits this purpose very well.

The thing about solar cookers is that most people have the ability to make a solar cooker as easily as parking their car to face the sun; as you can see in this googled pic. You can buy one of those aluminum reflectors that you normally place in the windshield to keep your car cool when it is parked. You can place it behind the dashboard so the food on the dashboard will cook faster. This can be done in some vehicles' back glass too, but not all.

I've only baked cookies once this way. It was godly. My old car smelled of fresh baked cookies for about 3 days after that.

>>47200
Summer in Phoenix is already dry enough, my house is an oven without me cooking inside, I tend to grill more, I'll totally try this stuff out, seems pretty nifty and I can do other stuff while it's doing it's thing. Thanks op, that choco cake totally made me hungry though :P

Kind of sucks for winter. But I guess you can construct a clay oven.

Tips for making a solar cooker,

Black absorbs sunlight and turns it into thermal energy. Place your food inside black painted containers or on black painted trays.

The more square area you have to reflect the sun the hotter your cooker will be.

The more air tight and insulated the cooker the hotter it will be.

2 pieces of glass, with a small space between them, will prevent wind from fluctuating the internal temperatures a great deal.

To cook, your solar cooker only need to reach 180F. Though the hotter it can get the faster the cooking times. You can cook in the dead of winter if the sun is out.

You can make cheap as hell solar cookers or very high tech expensive ones. Here's a googled pic of one made from plastic wrap, silver duct tape, and juice cartons.

For solar box ovens, the ambient air temp is of little concern. It's the food temp that really matters. Use a black container for get the food hot. Use reflective interior of the oven to reflect the light to the container. I personally prefer hot ambient air in the oven, so I paint everything inside black; this ensures me hardly any light will be reflected.

Light color foods tend to cook much slower than dark color foods, if the foods are not inside a closed black container.

>>47205
Awesome, OP.

Keep up the good work!
I actually backpack, and your pictures are good. While I usually take my small stove and fuel, I might consider a few extra ounces of weight just to try one of your stoves when I am out in the shit.

>>47223
Not true. The only difference is the number of hours in the day there is sunlight and the angle the sun is to the cooker. That is why this one here >>47084 has such a high back. You only need to increase the reflector size for days that are partially cloudy.

>>47219
Solar cookers are ridiculously easy and inexpensive to make. You can literally make a functional one for $0 in trash.

>>47229
Also, keep the cooker aligned with the sun by realigning it once an hour at least. You can go 2 hours between realignments, but that's stretching it. Keeping it aligned mean the food will cook faster. Making a very hot cooker is best since cooking times can be shortened to that of conventional ovens.

>>47234
The issue is, that I backpack in the fall and winter here, as it's more tolerable outside. Id rather deal with cold and snow than heat and bugs. So, a solar oven has a harder time building heat.

>>47234
Carry items that are dual use. Look at your needs and materials and go from there. For instance this cooker, >>47095 is just a ziplock bag and a box with something wrapped around it to help insulate it.

You can use an emergency blanket, with a box you keep items in, some plastic wrap you've been using, and an old shirt to make a solar cooker like that. The point is that the materials to make it can be stuff you are already using and carrying.

>>47240
The sun isn't the problem unless its cloudy. The only problem is insulation and the size of your reflectors. Plant your cooker in a blanket and use large light weight reflectors and you can literally cook food in 12F weather. I know, I've baked bread in that weather with 2 feet of snow on the ground.

>>47242
I know, but weight and space are of concern.

I try to go out prepared. Even if I dont have my stove, I take a few (1 or 2) cans of vienna sausages just in case.

>>47247
>weight and space are of concern.

Which is why I recommend using dual-purpose materials.

>>47247
Not to mention some freeze dried meals I can boil water and reconstitute.

Here's a solar cooker located at a pizza restaurant in Cuba.

This is where I got my large solar cooker design from; the Heaven's Flame solar box cooker.

Here is a commercial solar cooker for hiking. I think it would take too long to cook for me, but it should work.

Here is someone's winter solar box oxen.

Here someone has made a parabolic solar cooker using an old umbrella and foil.

Here is a few different type of panel cookers. These types normally use two containers. A clear outer container and a black inner container. This help collect the light and insulate the thermal energy from getting out.

This solar panel cooker is a "CooKit" design,

http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/CooKit

These are very simple to make. The above link has plans on how to make them.

Well, I'm off to bed.

dang, I hope you're watching this thread still

I was just wondering if you ever paint like everything black that isn't reflective just to up the heat some more?

Also in other tutorials I've seen they make insulating layers inside the boxes with like a box in a box and newspaper acting as insulation, but I don't see you do that

question: i see sometimes plastic wrap being used instead of glass? i assume simple saran wrap would melt? there are picture frames at the dollar store with simple glass in them i assume that would work better? tempered glass what?

would two layers of cheap dollar store picture frame glass work? as in a space of air between the glass to act as an insulator? or would the somewhat reflective nature of twice the glass prove somewhat counter-productive?

does just regular tinfoil work? is that what this is?

thinking of just painting a jar black and buying a roll of aluminum foil and taping that to cardboard. $3 solar cooker shit why not?

what outside temperature becomes too cold for a cheap solar cooker? approx how much cloud cover is too much? i assume 5% of the sky covered in clouds is fine.

I only made a very simple solar cooker, and it's great. I can even cook crappy TV dinners in it, and they taste much better than cooking them indoors. The sun gives a nice flavor and mildness to dishes, that no other cooking method does.

>>47338
Using crumpled paper with the box in a box method does work. I used it in this one >>47084

Using a box in a box method is the easiest way to make a solar box cooker. My largest here >>47077 uses that method, but the insulation is layers of corrugated box cardboard, scrap building blackboard, with a shell of used blue foam building insulation. The foam had to be on the very outside of the insulation otherwise it would melt. When using cardboard pieces to pack as insulation you'll need to repack it after a few uses because the heat will shrink it.

In this photo, you can see the 3 type of insulation I used. If you are going to use crumpled paper or cardboard you'll need to have a large insulating area. Make sure the inner box has something solid for it to rest on the bottom so it won't sink down with crumpled paper. Insulating with cardboard can make a cooker that weighs a lot more than the crumpled paper kind.

>>47573
The clear stuff for solar cookers is referred to as "glazing". you can use plastic or glass depending on how hot your cooker will get inside. A lot temp cooker that focuses light directly to a pot like the CooKit can use plastic sincethe plastic will not be getting hot. You can use plastic oven bags used to roast turkey. You can use a simple grocery store LDPE plastic bag, like used for my funnel cooker here >>47097 which has a cage of coat hangers to keep it from touching the cooking container (which is very hot.)

For the medium range temperature cookers you can use regular plate glass like that in picture frames or windows. Make sure they are slightly loose fitting in their frame. Thermal expansion can crack them when they otherwise would not crack; give them room to expand and contract.

For the hotter solar cookers, around 250Fand higher, I recommend using an inner glazing made of tempered glass. You need to either tailor your cooker to the size of tempered glass or order a special size for your needs. Don't try cutting tempered glass yourself or you'll end up with a pile of little squares of glass at worst.

In this image, you can see the inner plate glass of my large cooker has cracked around the 250F mark. I was actually pretty happy when that happened because the temps were getting higher than all the tutorials I'd been reading.

cont...

>>47573
...cont

>would two layers of cheap dollar store picture frame glass work?

Yes, depending on the heat.

>as in a space of air between the glass to act as an insulator?

Yes, this is what you need to do.

>would the somewhat reflective nature of twice the glass prove somewhat counter-productive?

Yes, additional pieces of glass does reduce the amount of light going into the cooker. This is why no more than 2 glazings is recommended. 1 pane of glass will reflect light off both the front surface and the inside surface; not just the front surface as most people think. With one glazing you may notice a lot of steam condensing on the glass; which also reflect more light. With two this is less common. The insulating air space is what really makes up for the reflectiveness of the glass.

>does just regular tinfoil work? is that what this is?

I use aluminum foil. In shiny metal vs a mirror the light passes through the glass on the mirror 2 times, twice reducing the light and with shiny metal it does not reduce nearly as much. Also, shiny metal helps defuse the light which offers better heat coverage over a mirror or chromed metal.

>jar, paint, foil, cardboard

Instead of tape, use a mixture of half water and half Elmer's/wood glue. Apply the glue to the cardboard then apply the foil shiny side up. Some people don't know that foil has a dull side and a shiny side, so make sure the shiny side is reflecting the sun.

>>47601
>what outside temperature becomes too cold for a cheap solar cooker?

If the cooker is well insulated and the day is sunny then there is no cold on Earth that can stop a solar cooker. Your biggest troubles are wind and clouds.

>approx how much cloud cover is too much?

This depends exclusively on the amount of reflector space you have. Some cookers drop temps quickly due to poor insulation and small reflectors, when a cloud passes over them. Other, well-made cookers won't drop temps very much. If you have a massive amount of reflector space and a very well insulated box cooker, you can cook on an over-cast cast where you cannot see the sun. It will take a lot longer obviously. You'd most likely need 2 times the reflector space as my largest solar box cooker here >>47120

>>47680
Actually, it is the low temperatures that are affecting the flavor of your food. Conventional cooking devices use much higher heat to cook in a much shorter amount of time. Normal range solar cookers slow cook the food at low temperatures. This keeps from destroying heat-sensitive vitamins in your foods among other things. To do this indoors, you'd only need to gently heat the food in the same range and times as you do when cooking outside with the solar cooker.

Other tips,

The more food you pack into a solar cooker the longer it takes to cook the food. The denser the food the longer it will take to cook. To help cook faster you can chop foods up into much smaller pieces. For other foods you simply need to rethink what you are doing. If you want boiled eggs, you need to realize that you don't need water to cook the egg in the shell when using a solar box cooker. If you added water and tried to boil it for the egg it would take much longer.

Canning jars such as glass mason jars act as pressure cookers when they are properly sealed. The black painted jar heats up and the air and water pressure cooks the contents. Be careful when using a mason jar with pasta. It can obliterate the pasta in a very short amount of time, reducing it to mere mush. Mush pasta is god awful. A mason jar can cook rice and beans faster.

You can also can vegetables with a solar cooker using mason jars. However, I would consider this a Water-Bath method of canning and not pressure canning, so only can foods that are safe for water bath canning. If you do use a painted jar, put a piece of tape up one side prior to painting it. Then remove the tape so that there is one stripe of paint missing. You will be able to see the contents of the jar and determine when it's boiling or whatever.

In regards to paints, for jars you can use anything, but for anything that will be exposed to vapors while cooking, like loose food inside a solar box cooker, I recommend using oven/grill safe paints that don't give off toxic fumes when hot.

solarstar is an awesome. he is a best

More tips,

At times the sun will not be out, the sky too cloudy for your cooker, there's bad weather in general, and of course there's nighttime. There are ways to "charge up" a solar cooker. However, this can take a while to do depending on your designs. The simpliest way to do this is to add thermal mass to the inside of the cooker. Bricks and stones are good for this. You can heat them up when you are not cooking until they are excessively hot. You'll need to insulate them very well when the sun is not shining of course. A cooker can be charging all day when you are at work then when you get home you can pop food into it jsut as the sun is going down and you should still be able to cook the food because of how hot the bricks/stones are. The more brick/stone you use the longer the charge is needed, but the longer the heat will last when there's no sun.

There are oil versions of this where a thermosiphon system is used to heat up cold oil and exchange that heat to a cooking surface inside your home (solar water heaters are like this). With a large enough tank you can heat quite a bit of oil to cooking temps.

I designed a solar coffee roaster two years ago. The main component was a fresnel lens I bought one ebay, which is 48 inches diagonal and can focus the light into a half inch wide bar which gets up to something like 1000 degrees on the surface. I then took a glass piece from a large kerosene lantern, and mounted to mason jar lids on each end of a threaded piece of metal as a spit. The spit is attached to a cordless drill and sits in the sun beam. The coffee gets roasted in about 10-15 minutes if there are no clouds. It also worked for popcorn and granola. Fresnel lenses are really neat.

Anyone know anything about more permanent solar ovens? it would be sweet to have a solar oven in my yard, throw in some bread dough, come back in a few hours to freshly baked bread.

>>48051
Yes, design them in the same way you would any solar cooker. There are ones like this adobe solar cooker that are simply positioned towards the main arch of the sun and used throughout the day.

I personally prefer ones with as many reflectors as I can fit on it. So to decrease the cooking times.

If I were you and serious about making a permanent solar cooker, I would first make several portable solar box cookers. This will allow you to tinker around and find the best design for your needs.

>>48050
I love Fresnel lenses. I haven't played around with them in years.

More tips,

If you are making a durable panel cooker, look for 2 pots. One that is large and clear and one that is small and black. The thicker the black pot the longer it will take to heat up. So, a very thin-walled pot will have far less thermal mass and heat up very quickly. Having the 2-pot method, where one fits completely inside the other, seems to be the most durable way to make the cooking vessel for a panel cooker.

While plastic bags are very cheap and easy to use, they can stick and melt to the hot surface of the cooking vessel. Making a foldable, wire, coat hanger grid to keep the bag from touching the cooking vessel is best.

This thread is awesome and I want to get into it some day. But this thread won't be there anymore by then. Do you have any links you could post in the sticky? Or do you want to make some sort of infographic?

>>48086
You can save this thread and any others on 4chan by saving the page as an html on your PC. In Firefox you do this, File>Save Page As>save to where ever on your PC. IE and Chrome have similar page saving things I'm sure. You'll need to save the large images individually though.

It you need to store it someplace then upload it to a file sharing site.

>>48091
Well, sure I could do that. I might as well just google solar cooking. But I figure it's more useful if the info is available in condensed form to all of /diy/. And I assumed that you maybe know one or two sites to list in the sticky.

>>48086
>>48104
http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Solar_Cookers_World_Network_%28Home%29

Praise the sun.

>>48105
>Dark Souls
Oh fuck, you just made me very happy.

Ever painted the outside of the cookers black to increase the temp a little more?

Also any increase from using 1 way mirrors?

>>48145
Refer to this post >>47942 about the use of mirrors. One-way mirrors would be even less efficient than a normal mirror since some light passes through the mirror and would be lost.

Painting the outside of your solar cooker may or may not help. Black is the color that transfers heat better than any other color. This is why the heat sink on the back of a refrigerator is painted black instead of white like the rest of the fridge. So there is a chance that a the outside of black painted solar box cooker may transfer heat away more than claim heat from ambient light. This is especially true of a cooker with panel large enough to shade the box.

Cookers with little insulation that have their box exposed to the sun, like my bread riser here, >>47114 will benefit from having the sides painted black.

I wouldn't paint a shaded box cooker with black paint for the purpose of having it perform better.

>>48086
>>48104
liek this? took out a bunch of nonsense.
http://www.2shared.com/document/6BsqDInN/Solarstar_-_Solar_Cooking.html

>>48165
lol Not bad.

>>48086
The "Abduction!" firefox addon is great for capturing whole entire webpages, or even just selecting an area.

Combine that with the Greasemonkey addon + the 4chan X or 4chan Y userscript or some facsimile thereof to expand images, on top of all the other myriad great features those do, and you get a nice big image of all expanded images right next to the posts.

>>48204
404 redirecting, showing a whole thread or post without being in the thread, auto thread refreshing, report buttons, quick replying, customizable keybinds, option to force anonymity, hide threads/posts, and image search and exif buttons on posts are some of the more salient things that are in 4chan X/Y.

>>48214
On boards that support it you can press Ctrl+S to use spoiler tags instantly when using 4chanX.

i'm going to make one of these. but with a glass jar painted black inside the pop bottle.

that will give me a little protection from the wind which is critical for good temps. without having to buy oven bags (can be hard to find, not cheap), glass, or muck about with thin melty plastics.

$1 foil, $1 glue, $1 pop, $1 paint, $1 jar, cardboard free everywhere. 10 minutes of labour. fuck, might as well.

sound good solarstar? and is the corn bread recipe any different for a solar cooker?

>>48287
Looks good to me. you might want to insulate the cooking vessel from the plastic where it rests on the plastic. In fact, you can cut the bottom of the bottle off and use the rest to simply set over the top of the jar. Then the cooking vessel won't be touching the plastic at all and there should be enough of a seal at the bottom to prevent wind from causing too much trouble with heat lose.

Speaking of wind, always remember to tie down your cooker and panels so the wind doesn't knock it over. Also, have it guarded against pets. Dogs love to tear them up to get the food from inside.

>recipe any different for a solar cooker?

No. The only differences you'll have are cooking times and that varies widely from cooker to cooker and day to day. I recommend investing in an oven thermometer or an electric food thermometer and googling food temps if you really want to be specific.

Also, you can always make larger panels by gluing more cardboard pieces together using 1/2 and 1/2 wood/elmers glue and water mix. I did that for my large, indoor, window reflector for my spring vegetable seedlings. It lasted a few years, I need to make a new one.

>>48047
More about heat storage and "latent" solar cooking,

Wilson solar grill (pictured and lol shopped it seems),
http://inhabitat.com/wilson-solar-grill-stores-the-suns-energy-for-nighttime-fuel-free-grilling/

Novel concept for the Wilson solar grill, but I see several glaring errors in the design itself, just for light collection alone.

http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Heat_storage

My problem is motivation. I want to cook with a solar cooker, but when I remember or have the real urge to do so, it's usually late in the evening or whatever. lol

Sometimes I get up at dawn when the sun's rays first reach the area and start cooking things. That's rare though.

Man, I love these kinds of stuff.
I made a solar cooker last month and I've enjoyed solar-cooked meals ever since.
It's mostly pancakes, omelettes, soups and bread.

I know it's kinda ghetto, but it's so DIY and awesome

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk_OU9aRV1I

solar oven + sun tracking
gets so warm that he even has it set to turn away from the sun

>>49226
It's only ghetto when you just slap crap together and don't polish it up to look nice after experimenting.

Just telling everyone, you can use freezepage.com to freezepages with images. THough, lately for me, it won't save the images. don't know why

>>50425
>THough, lately for me, it won't save the images. don't know why

Go to their site and contact them about it. It may be a small error on their part and they do not know about it yet. Make sure to mention how much you like using their site. That always helps to get people to listen to bug reports.

bumping for love of the sun